A day after Rep. Marty Seifert, Republican candidate for governor, had his lieutenant governor pick, Anoka County Commissioner Rhonda Sivarajah, hit rival GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, Emmer had his surrogate hit back.

In a lengthy email, Rep. Mark Buesgens, chairman of Emmer's campaign, said he was "disappointed" in Seifert's second's "attacks."

Buesgens response gets just as deep in the attacking weeds. From the email:

Twins Stadium
In her email yesterday, Rhonda Sivarajah repeats the Seifert campaign's attack on the amendment to add a referendum to the Twins stadium vote which Emmer voted against. While it's fair to bring up that vote, it is not fair to imply that Tom Emmer didn't "stand up for the taxpayers" when it comes to stadium votes. In fact, he voted against the referendum because he did not believe a taxpayer-funded stadium was proper even if it was imposed via referendum, and he wanted to encourage legislators to vote the stadium bill down outright.

Northstar Rail
Ms. Sivarajah also pointed to an amendment to the 2005 bonding bill, with Seifert voting for removal of funding for the Northstar commuter rail project, and Emmer voting against. She says "Representative Emmer voted against this amendment to de-fund Northstar" -- clearly implying that Emmer favored funding of Northstar. There's only one problem with this argument: Emmer voted against the final bill that actually funded the Northstar rail project, while Seifert voted for it. Seifert actually voted to fund Northstar in two bonding bills: $37 million in 2005 and $60 million in 2006.

It takes a lot of nerve to make this criticism of Emmer when it was Seifert who actually voted for the funding.

Tort Reform
Sivarajah's email also discusses the "cheeseburger bill", a bill which banned a certain type of obesity lawsuit, to suggest that Emmer is against tort reform because he is a "trial lawyer." While Tom is technically a "trial lawyer" because he does litigation work, most of his work has been on the defense side of the argument. Tom supports reforms to our legal process and so do most of his clients, so to imply that his professional work influenced how he voted on a bill is very disingenuous.

Cap-and-Trade
The Seifert campaign has also made several unsuccessful attempts to debunk the allegation that Seifert voted for cap and trade legislation.

Back in 2007, Marty Seifert jumped on the global warming bandwagon and voted for several energy/environment bills that have been driving up the cost of our energy ever since. Now he's trying to run away from those votes by saying they weren't really cap and trade bills.

He also writes that the Republican caucus, which Seifert lead, had "began to lose their way and stopped standing up for the Republican principles you and I believe in." Ouch.